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Thursday, October 16, 2008

Cover design

Part of the whole idea of "make a book I'd want to read" was designing the cover of Post. I knew I wanted to use that picture I had taken of Red Animal War (at the show that pretty much changed my life) in some way, so I started there. Using Word -- yes, Word -- I laid things out, including the entire pic, which not only features Justin playing live, but also Jeff and Jaime. Nick suggested I crop the other guys out to focus on the shot of Justin screaming his head off away from the microphone.

Coupled with the advice from Nick's partner in Mission Label at the time, the title itself was in a different color than the rest of the artwork. Since hunter green is my favorite, I just went with it. It's an odd coincidence that the picture of Red Animal War was at a place called Green Means Go! Since I realized that, the phrase "green means go" has meant a lot of other things to me.

Where I placed all the lettering of the book was intentionally to the right. This book is about post- things, so why in the world would I want to put the lettering on the left or center of the cover?

I haven't received a lot of feedback from people about the cover, but one of the few that has said something really flattering. It came from a friend of mine who is music junkie (in the best of ways) and loves album artwork. Not only with albums, but especially with singles artwork. Then I got to thinking; I subconsciously designed the cover in the vein of what a lot of Jade Tree releases looked like (especially the Promise Ring's).

So, if you dig what you see, it's all me. If you hate what you see, blame me.